Thursday, January 13; 1977—THE BULLETIN—3
MRS. CHARLES BALINSKY, president of Canadian Hadassali-WIZO, cliats with Israel President Ephrafan Katzfa*, during recent National Leadership Mission to IsraeL Besides meetbig with Israel's top officials, Mission members and husbands toured the nation and visited Canadian Hadassah-WIZO projects.
BY LEA LEVAVI
JERUSALEM — Twelve families of Soviet dropout doctors now living in the U.S. are considering aliyah after being disappointed in America.
Prof. Simon Trakhtenberg, an immigrant from the Soviet Union and a cardiologist at Kaplan hospital in Rehovot, recently attended two international conferences on cardiology in Caracas and in Philadelphia. At both, and during a short vacation between them, he met Soviet drop-outs, including some who had been personal friends in Russia.
Like other Soviet immigrants who opted for Western countries other than Israel, the doctors who chose the U.S. were lured by economic opportunity.
However, the doctors find themselves in a difficult position. Prof.
BY WOLF BLITZER
WASHINGTON- The Palestine Liberation Organization recently suffered a setback in its efforts to win respectability in the United States when the man it had slated to head a new Washington lobbying office was informed by the State Department that he would have to leave the U.S.
In determining that Sabri Jiryis, a former Israeli Arab who graduated from the Hebrew University and practised law in Haifa before emigrating in 1970, could not have his visa extended, the State Department acted on a technicality-Jiryis had provided false information about his place of birth when he applied for the U.S. entry visa in Nicosia, Jiryis, who now travels on a' Sudanese passoirt^ was born in pre-Israel Palestine, but listed his place of birth as the Sudan. Under U.S. law, that was enough of a violation to bar an extension;
The PLO has operated an office in New York since 1965. That operation is separate from the PLO's United Nations mission approved by the world body in 1974. On 1965-66, the PLO had an
office in Washington, but it was closed, presumably because the Arab League maintained a well-organized and well-financed office in the American capital that, for all practical purposes, did the work of the PLO. In fact, the director of the Arab Information Centre in Washington is a Palestinian, highly supportive of the PLO.
The U.S. Justice Department maintains that any foreign government or group can open an office in the U.S. provided that it registers as a foreign agent with the Department and clearly labels all its propaganda material as that originating with the foreign agent. All written material circulated by the foreign agent, his source of income, the nature of his work and'the number of employees and their background must be provided to the Justice Department, whose files on foreign agents are open to the public for inspection.
The PLO's New York office is registered and the proposed -Washington Office would also have
been. When ,State Department officials informed concerned Israeli diplomats that there was really nothing that could be done to prevent the PLO from establishing an office in the capital, they were not misleading the Israelis. The only thing that could be done, the State Department said, was to investigate the individuals involved to see whether there were any legalities violated.
While Israel and its supporters here may have won a short term victory in deporting Jiryis, most American officials here are fairly weU-certain that the PLO will make another attempt at opening (Continued on- Page 10) See: THWART PLO
Miiiister
NEW YORK—The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in a statement of consensus, said it "vigorously opposes and deplores any meetings—official or unofficial—with the Palestine Liberation Organization." The text of the statement was adopted at a plenary meeting of the Presidents Conference. The statement was introduced by David Blumberg, president of B'nai B'rith.
* Two PLO officials met recently with five Jews in Washington and a number of Jews in New York. All the Jews present said they were there as private individuals, not as representatives of any organizations for which they worked. Several, however, were reprimanded by their respective organizations for participating in the meetings.
AVRAHAM OFER, Israel's Housing Bfinister, shot liimself to death Jan. 3. Ofer, 55, left a note saying he lacked the strength to withstand auctions being spread that he had embezzled public funds before he became a minister. "I did not embezzle or steal, it is all lies and fabrications," said the note. The Calnnet subsequently dropped all investigations of the charges.
LONDON—The annual report of the British Broadcasting Corporation, published recently, re-
iSICHAEL ELKINS
ferred to an inquiry made by the board of governors into allegations that the BBC was wrong to make use of a reporter who was a convinced Zionist as its correspondent in Israel. ^
"Such a person, it was said, could not be impartial in his reporting of events in Israel," the report stated. "The allegations against the BBC and its reporter were not new. They had been common-place for several years, but on this occasion direct representations were made to the board, amounting to an appeal against the earlier rejection by the director-general and his staff of the Charges made.
"After careful investigation'we came to the conclusion that the test to be applied lay within the terms of reference given to the
correspondent by the BBC and not to what he might believe or do in his private capacity. By that test the correspondent had behaved in a way which called for no reproach, and had indeed deserved praise on a number of occasions.
"It also seemed to us that the excellence of the service frpm Israel required the BBC to be sure to maintain coverage of matching quality from the rest of the Middle East."
In November last year the BBC director-general, Sir Charles Curran, rejected a collective request by eight of the most powerful pro-Arab lobbyists in Britain for "an impartial inquiry'V into the "Zionist bias" of its correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Elkins. JCNS.
Trakhtenberg knows of 512 Soviet Jewish physicians in the U.S., of whom only 40 have passed medical board exams. One problem is their lack of English. Another is that a doctor with 30 or more years of specialized work experience has forgotten, or has not kept up with developments in areas of medical practice outside his speciality.
The result is that many of these doctors are working as orderlies. If some had said cynically that even welfare aid in America is more money than a Russian or an Israel doctor's salary, it is bard for them to feel that way now.
While in America, some of these doctors and their families have developed the national Jewish consciousness they didn't have before.
But there is another factor which explains the slowly awakening interest in Israel; it is tl^e fact that Soviet Jewish physicians who came to Israel have entered their profession here and some among them are in high positions. As two examples. Prof. Trakhtenberg cited a Dr. Levine of Moscow, now director of surgery at the Afula hospital, and a Dr. Bronfman of Riga, now a senior
neurologist at Rothschild hospital in Haifa.
At the international conferences he attended, Prof. Trakhtenberg was impressed by the great concern for the development of preventive medicine. Preventive medicine is a specialty in the Soviet Union, one in which many Soviet Jewish doctors who left Russia are experts. "If they came here, they could do for preventive medicine in this country what the aliyah of German doctors did for clinical medicine here in 1930s."
Now that 12 doctors and their families are giving some thought to aliyah, plans are being made — with the cooperation of the Jewish Agency — to bring them on a pilot tour. They will pay their own way, Prof. Trakhtenberg emphasized, but they will be helped to visit hospitals, to explore job opportunities and to get housing near the hospital if they decide to immigrate.
This last problem is one to which Prof. Trakhtenberg is particularly sensitive, since he works in Rehovot and was given an apartment in Holon. But instead of complaining about the difficulties he faced in his own absorption, he decided to devote his time helping other olim.
(Jerusalem Post)
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THE HAGUE — PieterMenten, the Dutch millionaire art collector accused of complicity in the slaying of more than 300 Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, was held in seclusion for questioning after he was extradited from Switzerland to Holland.
Menten, 73, who fled with his wife from their palatial mansion outside Amsterdam on Nov. 14 oiily hours before police came to arrest him, was flown back to Holland aboard a Dutth police aircraft shortly after the Swiss expulsion order.
Menten served eight months in a Dutch prison in 1951 for collaboration with the Nazis in Poland in 1941 and 1942 when he was an SS officer. The Dutch have claimed he returned to Holland in 1943 with three railroad cars of valuable furniture and paintings.
In more recent years, the art collector amazed a fortune of millions and lived in a 50-room mansion at Blaricum, south of Amsterdam.
In Geneva, the Swiss Government's decision to extradite Menten on the basis of an unpub-blished 12-year-old decree was generally approved by Swiss editorial writers.
However, most of the editorials agreed the decision was on shaky legal ground and deplored the authorities had failed to seek an amendment of Swiss law in t^ie spirit of the 1965 decree allowing the government to waive the statute of limitations for suspected war criminals and extradite them.
CJerusalem Post)
97 HARTFORD HOMES DEFACED
H^TFORD — West Hartford police are searching for vandals who painted anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-white slogans on some 97 homes here. Most of the homes are owned by no^-Jews, the Connecticut Jewish Ledger reported. But the home of at least one prominent Jewish leader was a target. Police believe the vandals are the same ones who defaced four Jewish - owned homes in the King Philip area three months ago.
GOLDA MEIR reads a B'nal B'rith Women «'Dolls for Democracy" script^ presented to her by BBW intematioiial piesident Kaygey Kash (right) at a private meeting in Jerasalem. On the desk Is the Gelda MeIr doU piesented to the former Israeli Prime Minister. II Is one of the BBW doll collection of the worid*s gieat men and women who have enriched and strengthened the ties of onderstanding and co-operation among people. BBW members pxesent the life stories of these people to schools, religions and civic groups. With them Is Shalom Doron, chahrman of hoard of BBW Children's Home in Israel, a residential treatment centre for emotionally disturbed boys.